Dear Commissioner Blackham: Thank you for your response to my email to Gov. Herbert regarding HB 187. While I appreciate your time, I disagree with your position on several points. First, I have seen videos of animal mistreatment taken by workers that that have been used to expose the owners of dairies and other animal [...]
Posts Tagged ‘industrial food’
HB 187: The Commissioner Responds
Dear Mr. Mitchell Thank you for the recent email regarding HB 187. Governor Herbert is aware of the bill and asked me, the State’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Food to directly respond to you. I see that you are a small dairy operator who works with animal agriculture too. I’ve been raising turkeys all my [...]
On Criminalizing Documentation of Animal Abuse
Today I sent the following message to my Governor and State Legislators regarding HB 187, the “Agricultural Operation Interference Act”: Dear Sir, I am writing to ask you to oppose HB 187. I run a small dairy outside Paragonah, and we are proud of how we treat our animals. We always welcome visitors – with [...]
The Oddities of Food Labeling
A few months ago, one of our customers asked why we use rennet that contains the preservative sodium benzoate. The answer, as we posted then, was that we couldn’t find rennet that didn’t have it. Our cheese contains so little of the preservative that you would have to eat 3,000 pounds of it to ingest [...]
Seed Catalogs: Welcome to the Monoculture
‘Tis the season for seed catalogs, and for dreaming of the coming spring garden! Yet I can’t help but notice a similarity between the various catalogs I get. Last week I received three, two from companies in Illinois and one from Minnesota. A quick survey revealed: All three sell Item #B7739, Oriental Lily Mix, priced [...]
Half a Billion Eggs Recalled
The CNN headline says, “Feed likely source of salmonella in eggs, federal officials say.” This as the egg recall expands to 550 million eggs from two mega-egg-producers in Iowa, with tainted eggs traced to 23 states and almost 1,500 cases of salmonella poisoning. Kind of makes you wonder what those mega-farmers feed their chickens. Sustainable [...]
Sustainable Saints, or Loam-Loving Luddites?
This post by Kerry Trueman was originally posted on The Green Fork. Have you heard the truth about just how bad the good food movement really is? The boosters of biotech want you to know that our global food crisis will only be worsened by the sustainable ag advocates who oppose technological breakthroughs, the [...]
Canada’s Egg Police: Industry vs. Small Farmers
In Canada, a small farmer with 99 or fewer hens can sell “ungraded” eggs at his/her gate, but nowhere else. So a small farmer who sells eggs at the farmers market is breaking the law. With prices for farmstead eggs skyrocketing, industrial egg producers are fighting back against what they see as an infringement [...]
The Cheese Handbook
(Joi image.) “Scientific investigation… has made industrial cheese making more efficient, which is a less pleasant thought, for the inevitable concomitant of idustrial efficiency has been a standard of meditocrity…” –The Cheese Handbook (Bruce H. Axler), available on Google Books.
